oldie

http://malborkmalbork.blogspot.com/2013/07/february-mornings-podere-campriano.html

i've been looking back through the blog and realizing how many bits and pieces that i've now imported into my novel i also have recorded in photos. that whole post and its atmosphere have been pretty much what i've been grasping at the past year and a half...

all-day herding of vilsau, lurekalven, norway

afternoon moment with the sheep at lygra

norway's coast in the fall, lygra

Cold morning, Podere Campriano

 On the few days when the ground wasn't frozen, the mud was deeper than knee-high boots.

Lambing season, Podere Campriano

February mornings, Podere Campriano

 Above: beautiful hot milk, the reward for getting up at dawn and undergoing two cold, hay-dusty hours of milking and feeding

There is a sign on the long dirt road to the property that warns hunters of the Podere's three dogs. "That's good, that way the hunters won't get near and accidentally shoot your dogs," I said to Claudio. "No," said Claudio, "It's so that the hunters don't get near, because if they do, our dogs will eat their dogs." And in fact there are corpses of deer and skeletons of sheep all over the property.

First Sight by Philip Larkin

-->
-->

First Sight

Philip Larkin

Lambs that learn to walk in snow

When their bleating clouds the air

Meet a vast unwelcome, know

Nothing but a sunless glare.

Newly stumbling to and fro

All they find, outside the fold,

Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,

Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies

Hidden round them, waiting too,

Earth’s immeasurable surprise.

They could not grasp it if they knew,

What so soon will wake and grow

Utterly unlike the snow.

The sheep child

 Lygra, Norway, 2012

"I woke, dying, 

 

In the summer sun of the hillside, with my eyes

Far more than human. I saw for a blazing moment   

The great grassy world from both sides,

Man and beast in the round of their need,

And the hill wind stirred in my wool,

My hoof and my hand clasped each other,

I ate my one meal

Of milk, and died

Staring ..."

--from James Dickey, The Sheep Child